“This is the first experimental demonstration that the natural material graphene can actually perform 10 times more efficiently than what steel does in the protection against a supersonic projectile,” said Lee about his Science article. “Moreover, it turns out that graphene can even surpass a highly engineered Kevlar armor fabric in double score.”

The title of the Science article is “Dynamic Mechanical Behavior of Multilayer Graphene via Supersonic Projectile Penetration,” which describes research indicating that “multilayer graphene efficiently dissipates the kinetic energy of a penetrating micro-projectile.” (January 2015)